Children of Divorce
by Sister Sapling
Summary: Based on a song. He felt the cold for the first time since meeting her, and he knew the child was a mistake. AU Harry/Ginny.


_A/N: I love Ginny/Harry as a functional pairing, so this is strictly AU. :) Based on Jonny Craig's song "Children of Divorce." I heard it last week at my college's Open Mic night, and the guy singing it was super cool. 3 Umm, I didn't know of this song before then, but now I love it. Please go listen! Even as you read :) I know I said I'd write PnF but I couldn't resist HP, it's my craze right now._

When he got home from the plane ride, Harry slammed his keys down on the counter so hard the cat hissed and jumped to the table. "Stupid woman!" Harry yelled, but his anger quickly dissolved and he sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. Then he did something he hadn't done in years; he began to sob. Snuffles walked over to him, peering at him curiously and sniffing him. Harry shooed him away.

He'd thought it was such a good idea. He'd traveled to meet an old friend and bumped into Ginny Weasley at a coffee shop on another rainy day. She was nothing like what he'd always thought his dream woman would look like; she was short, with lively red hair and tricky brown eyes. She was always either smiling or smirking, beautiful and funny and outgoing and never dull. His dreams of a tall dark-haired woman diminished in that moment, and somehow the two wound up sitting at the train station. Ginny was radiant and confident, and Harry barely noticed the rain around them.

The months went by, and Harry put off his plane ride home more and more until he was forced to stop staying in hotels and rented his own apartment. Temporary, he'd said to himself and Ginny, but when she came by more and more he was drawn in further to the life away from home. He even took up a job with the local music shop - little over minimum wage, but he was happy enough. It's not that he needed the money anyway. Ginny and Harry shared beds, and even at three in the morning Harry lay awake, wondering if the woman in his sheets wanted this to be permanent.

Then he found out she was pregnant, and suddenly this vivacious woman wanted to talk about him staying permanently. Forever, and what about marriage? Though Harry already felt permanent in his home away from home, the topic alone terrified him. Ginny was strong, and she never seemed to be tied down to him. Harry never planned on carrying her burdens, but suddenly her stomach was swelling with a child that belonged to him. She grew increasingly intolerable, lying down on her back and refusing to talk except to sob to him about how he didn't love her enough to be a father.

He saw his child before Ginny did; she was still crying and squeezing his hand after the hard labor this child had caused. He looked painfully like Harry; same nose, mouth, and eyebrows, but when he finally opened his eyes they were the exact same shape and shade of brown as Ginny's. Both the child and Ginny went to sleep minutes after the birth, leaving him to sit in his chair for four hours. That was when he knew; they had no future together, and he had to make that clear to her.

Ginny woke up with a smile for Harry, but it dissolved when he broke the news to her; he was going home. Her eyes narrowed and for a minute he thought she was going to make a sassy reply like the Ginny he'd met that first day in the coffee shop, but then her face crumpled and she began to bawl. The baby looked up into his mother's face and began to bawl. Harry was shaking his head, apologising to his broken girlfriend even as he walked out. "I'm sorry," was the only word he could say, like a sad echo of somebody who might've been brave before this city.

Even as he was leaving, Ginny sniffingly told the nurse, "His name is James Potter." The words hit Harry in the chest like a bullet; he was leaving behind a mother and a child, a mother who would have to work two jobs to get by. And a boy, James, who'd grow up without a father, but would carry that father's name forever. His body was screaming for him to turn back, embrace Ginny, settle down with his family; but even as he began to step back, he knew it would never be a reality for him. He forced himself forward, to the plane and numbly made his way home.

"That child was a mistake," he whispered to himself, feeling the cold and hearing the rain for the first time in two years.

_A/N: I don't know, I'm not sure I'm happy with it, but I tried. I love this song. :]_


End file.
